Concentration Camps on the Home Front

Concentration Camps on the Home Front PDF

Author: John Howard

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2009-05-15

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0226354776

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Without trial and without due process, the United States government locked up nearly all of those citizens and longtime residents who were of Japanese descent during World War II. Ten concentration camps were set up across the country to confine over 120,000 inmates. Almost 20,000 of them were shipped to the only two camps in the segregated South—Jerome and Rohwer in Arkansas—locations that put them right in the heart of a much older, long-festering system of racist oppression. The first history of these Arkansas camps, Concentration Camps on the Home Front is an eye-opening account of the inmates’ experiences and a searing examination of American imperialism and racist hysteria. While the basic facts of Japanese-American incarceration are well known, John Howard’s extensive research gives voice to those whose stories have been forgotten or ignored. He highlights the roles of women, first-generation immigrants, and those who forcefully resisted their incarceration by speaking out against dangerous working conditions and white racism. In addition to this overlooked history of dissent, Howard also exposes the government’s aggressive campaign to Americanize the inmates and even convert them to Christianity. After the war ended, this movement culminated in the dispersal of the prisoners across the nation in a calculated effort to break up ethnic enclaves. Howard’s re-creation of life in the camps is powerful, provocative, and disturbing. Concentration Camps on the Home Front rewrites a notorious chapter in American history—a shameful story that nonetheless speaks to the strength of human resilience in the face of even the most grievous injustices.

Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania

Italian Prisoners of War in Pennsylvania PDF

Author: Flavio G. Conti

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-10-19

Total Pages: 319

ISBN-13: 1611479983

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During World War II 51,000 Italian prisoners of war were detained in the United States. When Italy signed an armistice with the Allies in September 1943, most of these soldiers agreed to swear allegiance to the United States and to collaborate in the fight against Germany. At the Letterkenny Army Depot, located near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, more than 1,200 Italian soldiers were detained as co-operators. They arrived in May 1944 to form the 321st Italian Quartermaster Battalion and remained until October 1945. As detainees, the soldiers helped to order, stock, repair, and ship military goods, munitions and equipment to the Pacific and European Theaters of war. Through such labor, they lent their collective energy to the massive home front endeavor to defeat the Axis Powers. The prisoners also helped to construct the depot itself, building roads, sidewalks, and fences, along with individual buildings such as an assembly hall, amphitheater, swimming pool, and a chapel and bell tower. The latter of these two constructions still exist, and together with the assembly hall, bear eloquent testimony to the Italian POW experience. For their work the Italian co-operators received a very modest, regular salary, and they experienced more freedom than regular POWs. In their spare time, they often had liberty to leave the post in groups that American soldiers chaperoned. Additionally, they frequently received or visited large entourages of Italian Americans from the Mid-Atlantic region who were eager to comfort their erstwhile countrymen. The story of these Italian soldiers detained at Letterkenny has never before been told. Now, however, oral histories from surviving POWs, memoirs generously donated by family members of ex-prisoners, and the rich information newly available from archival material in Italy, aided by material found in the U.S., have made it possible to reconstruct this experience in full. All of this historical documentation has also allowed the authors to tell fascinating individual stories from the moment when many POWs were captured to their return to Italy and beyond. More than seventy years since the end of World War II, family members of ex-POWs in both the United States and Italy still enjoy the positive legacy of this encounter.

Prisoners of the Home Front

Prisoners of the Home Front PDF

Author: Martin F. Auger

Publisher: UBC Press

Published: 2011-11-01

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 0774841532

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In the middle of the most destructive conflict in human history, the Second World War, almost 40,000 Germans civilians and prisoners of war were detained in internment and work camps across Canada. Prisoners of the Home Front details the organization and day-to-day affairs of these internment camps and reveals the experience of their inmates. Auger concludes that Canada abided by the Geneva Convention; its treatment of German prisoners was humane. This book sheds light on life behind barbed wire, filling an important void in our knowledge of the Canadian home front during the Second World War.

Japanese American Incarceration

Japanese American Incarceration PDF

Author: Stephanie D. Hinnershitz

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2021-10-01

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 0812299957

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Between 1942 and 1945, the U.S. government wrongfully imprisoned thousands of Japanese American citizens and profited from their labor. Japanese American Incarceration recasts the forced removal and incarceration of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II as a history of prison labor and exploitation. Following Franklin Roosevelt's 1942 Executive Order 9066, which called for the exclusion of potentially dangerous groups from military zones along the West Coast, the federal government placed Japanese Americans in makeshift prisons throughout the country. In addition to working on day-to-day operations of the camps, Japanese Americans were coerced into harvesting crops, digging irrigation ditches, paving roads, and building barracks for little to no compensation and often at the behest of privately run businesses—all in the name of national security. How did the U.S. government use incarceration to address labor demands during World War II, and how did imprisoned Japanese Americans respond to the stripping of not only their civil rights, but their labor rights as well? Using a variety of archives and collected oral histories, Japanese American Incarceration uncovers the startling answers to these questions. Stephanie Hinnershitz's timely study connects the government's exploitation of imprisoned Japanese Americans to the history of prison labor in the United States.

Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War

Stalin's Italian Prisoners of War PDF

Author: Maria Teresa Giusti

Publisher: Central European University Press

Published: 2021-04-30

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9633863562

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This book reconstructs the fate of Italian prisoners of war captured by the Red Army between August 1941 and the winter of 1942-43. On 230.000 Italians left on the Eastern front almost 100.000 did not come back home. Testimonies and memoirs from surviving veterans complement the author's intensive work in Russian and Italian archives. The study examines Italian war crimes against the Soviet civilian population and describes the particularly grim fate of the thousands of Italian military internees who after the 8 September 1943 Armistice had been sent to Germany and were subsequently captured by the Soviet army to be deported to the USSR. The book presents everyday life and death in the Soviet prisoner camps and explains the particularly high mortality among Italian prisoners. Giusti explores how well the system of prisoner labor, personally supervised by Stalin, was planned, starting in 1943. A special focus of the study is antifascist propaganda among prisoners and the infiltration of the Soviet security agencies in the camps. Stalin was keen to create a new cohort of supporters through the mass political reeducation of war prisoners, especially middle-class intellectuals and military élite. The book ends with the laborious diplomatic talks in 1946 and 1947 between USSR, Italy, and the Holy See for the repatriation of the surviving prisoners.

The German POWs in South Carolina

The German POWs in South Carolina PDF

Author: Deann Bice Segal

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13:

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Many rural communities in South Carolina share a place in World War II history that has largely been forgotten. From 1943 to 1946, towns such as Aiken, Florence, Camden, Spartanburg, and York were enthusiastic hosts for a special group of laborers: German prisoners of war. These prisoners from the North African, Sicilian, and European campaigns filled needed jobs, mostly in agriculture, all across the nation. In South Carolina, prison camps were established in rural areas where labor was needed in agriculture, the lumber industry, and a few manufacturing jobs. Prisoner labor was also used on military bases to free civilian and army personnel for front-line duty. By the end of W.W.II, over 425,000 German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners were interned in prisoner of war camps in the United States. In South Carolina, the War Department established more than twenty camps in seventeen counties housing 8,000 to 11,000 German prisoners. These prisoners provided much needed labor in agricultural communities and were often the only direct connection with the enemy experienced on the home front. prisoners of war and to analyze their implementation in South Carolina from the perspectives of the American officials, the German prisoners, and the communities that housed the camps. This book examines the history of prisoners of war in South Carolina, focusing on life behind the wire, the labor performed by POWs, and the impact of this labor in South Carolina, the adherence to the Geneva Convention, attitudes that influenced policies for the treatment of prisoners, local reaction to the POWs and their labor, as well as the prisoners' impressions of the conditions in which they were held.

Axis Prisoners of War in Tennessee

Axis Prisoners of War in Tennessee PDF

Author: Antonio S. Thompson

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2023-03-03

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1476681678

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During World War II, Axis prisoners of war received arguably better treatment in the U.S. than anywhere else. Bound by the Geneva Convention but also hoping for reciprocal treatment of American POWs, the U.S. sought to humanely house and employ 425,000 Axis prisoners, many in rural communities in the South. This is the first book-length examination of Tennessee's role in the POW program, and how the influx of prisoners affected communities. Towns like Tullahoma transformed into military metropolises. Memphis received millions in defense spending. Paris had a secret barrage balloon base. The wooded Crossville camp housed German and Italian officers. Prisoners worked tobacco, lumber and cotton across the state. Some threatened escape or worse. When the program ended, more than 25,000 POWs lived and worked in Tennessee.

After the Hero's Welcome

After the Hero's Welcome PDF

Author: Dorothy H. McDaniel

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781936488483

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As an American asked to serve, I was prepared to fight, to be wounded, to be captured and even prepared to die, but I was not prepared to be abandoned. It is that one American is not worth the effort to be found, we, as Americans, have lost. These are the words of Captain Eugene Red McDaniel, who for six years was prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. For three of those years, he was listed missing in action. During those tumultuous years, his wife Dorothy McDaniel clung to her faith, knowing that he was still alive. It was her fight to find information on her POW husband, and his subsequent release from a North Vietnam prison that prompted them both to fight to have the United States government conduct search and rescue missions for prisoners they believed were still being held. In this 20th anniversary edition of After the Hero's Welcome, read the story that shows the war didn't end for either Dorothy or her husband when he was released. The war on behalf of the many POWs still in North Vietnam prisons was just getting started.

Prisoners of the Home Front

Prisoners of the Home Front PDF

Author: Martin F. Auger

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

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During the Second World War (1939--1945), five internment camps were created on the south shore of the St. Lawrence river for the incarceration of male individuals of German descent. They were known as Farnham, Grande Ligne, Ile-aux-Noix, Sherbrooke (Newington) and Sorel. Their goal was to neutralize any potential threat to the defence of the Canadian nation. With the entire country being mobilized for war, the security of the homefront was necessary. Any person suspected of sympathizing with the enemy was perceived as a potential "spy and Saboteur" and was incarcerated in internment camps. Individuals of German origin were no exception. During the first phase of southern Quebec's internment operation, 1940--1943, civilians formed the bulk of the inmates while during the second phase, 1942--1946, it was prisoners of war. This thesis analyzes how the region's internment operation developed. It deals primarily with the issue of life behind the barbed wires and how psychological strains came to affect inmates. It also looks at how Canadian authorities attempted to counter such problems by introducing labour projects and re-educational programs. This case study of southern Quebec demonstrates that the internment camp operation in Canada was an integral part of the effort to produce total war.

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